delekkerste

I saw it in person a couple of months ago - it's huge (probably the largest published Enric cover I've seen) and quite nice. Though, without Vampi on the cover, I'm taking a pass on it.

Just finished reading "Street Freak: Money and Madness at Lehman Brothers" by Jared Dillian, which covers his career as a trader at Lehman Brothers from 2001 until the bank's collapse. I have met Dillian a number of times and always knew he was a crazy, intense dude, but I didn't realize just how crazy (as in, literally - padded room and everything) until I read this fast-paced, entertaining book. If you enjoyed "Liar's Poker" (the book which put "BSD" into the vernacular), you'll probably enjoy this fast-paced, well-written memoir - check it out.

I think the end game for most investors in art & collectibles (and any other non-income generating assets) is reselling at a higher price. At the high end of fine art (and perhaps some collectibles), donations to museums can be used to help offset income or estate taxes, but this is all heavily scrutinized and no one is able to game the system and come out ahead versus selling the art for personal gain. Far from being insidious, the art donations are pretty noble if you think about it - I don't know any comic book or OA collectors who would give their collections away and realize less than 50% of the value of their collections through tax savings. In any case, I think most contemporary art is bought not for investment or with resale in mind, but rather because (1) it's used as decor, (2) the purchaser likes the art and/or (3) the purchaser wants to show off his wealth/status/taste.

Just finished reading Ben Mezrich's quasi-nonfiction book "Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History", about the 2002 theft of a 600-lb. safe containing 101 grams of moon rocks from NASA by three interns. It's the usual Mezrich fare - easy to read and hard to believe because of his self-admitted "recreated dialogue" and other liberties he takes with the facts, but it was a quick read and reasonably entertaining.

Here's a great article on Damien Hirst and the commodification of the contemporary art market that some of you may find interesting: Damien Hirst and the Great Art Market Heist

No need to read that. It was an intricate conspiracy to hush down a potential royal bas- scandal. Jack was really a rogue Mason doctor. (thumbs u I just finished reading another JTR book - "Jack the Ripper: Secret Service" by Tom Slemen (available free on Amazon for Kindle owners). The theory may be even more implausible as the one in From Hell (if that is possible) and should similarly be classified as "Fiction". If anyone is interested in a fuller review, check out the JTR thread in The Water Cooler.

Just finished a fabulously interesting and entertaining book about the history of pornographic magazines in the U.S., as told through the life stories of Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Larry Flynt and Al Goldstein. The book is by former High Times publisher and Screw editor-in-chief Mike Edison, and is called Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Of Playboys, Pigs and Penthouse Paupers: An American Tale of Sex and Wonder It is very well-written and informative (replete with copious footnotes), though it's also irreverent, opinionated, fast-paced and tough to put down. I would highly recommend it. Here's a review of the book in case you haven't heard of it: Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! Book Review

Recently finished the Hard Case Crime book, read "The Fundamentals of Hedge Fund Management" by Daniel Strachman and re-read "The $12 Million Stuffed Shark" book that's been mentioned. I'm now about 1/4th of the way through "Bruce Lee: Conversations - The Life and Legacy of a Legend" by Fiad Rafiq, which is an endless series of interviews the author did with Lee's former students, friends, colleagues, etc. So far, it paints the picture of Lee as a nice, but competitive guy, who really only taught martial arts to further his own skills rather than make his students better.

It's a good one - I read it a few years ago when it first came out. I think I might re-read it now as I'm about to take an Art Business course at NYU starting next month in my spare time.

Finished the Slash autobiography (a great read - not quite as entertaining as Neil Strauss' "The Dirt" about Motley Crue, but very good nonetheless) and am now already halfway through Jonny Porkpie's "The Corpse Wore Pasties" (a Hard Case Crime crime novel).

I'm 2/3rds of the way through with former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash's autobiography ("Slash" - Slash with Anthony Bozza). It's packed with lots of good stories/anecdotes; as a huge GN'R fan, I'm enjoying it a lot. My only gripe is that the book is riddled with glaring chronological inconsistencies. Still, it's a good read if you're a fan of the band or the '80s and early '90s rock/metal scene.

So, this gem showed up in a recent Profiles in History auction and immediately caught my attention. When I saw a copy of the same book among the display of Still's personal effects at the Clyfford Still Museum, that sealed the deal and I decided to go for it. This is a presentation copy of "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali" inscribed to Disney art director Robert Cormack with a double-page hand-drawn portrait by Salvador Dali. It bears an extraordinary association presentation drawing by Dali in ink on the front flyleaf verso and half title recto of a strolling nude and Satyr, inscribed by Dali on the half title, “Pour Robert Cormack, Avec le mellieur souvenir de notre collaboration --- Dali, 1946". Cormack was a Disney art director who worked on Fantasia, Bambi and Three Caballeros. He was to have been the director of the ill-fated 1946 Disney/Dali animated short titled, Destino, which went unrealized for more than 50 years due to the studio’s financial problems (and cold feet) at the time. Enjoy!

Finished both of the above and now I'm convinced that (a) I'm nowhere near ready to open an art gallery and (b) Jack the Ripper was almost undoubtedly a working class, lunatic madman who lived in the Whitechapel area, whether it was the author's preferred suspect or not. I'm now reading "Survival Guide for Traders: How to Set Up and Organize Your Trading Business" by Bennett A. McDowell.

Colorado woman accused of damaging $30 million painting By Keith Coffman | Reuters DENVER (Reuters) - A 36-year-old woman was accused of causing $10,000 worth of damage to a painting by the late abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still, a work valued at more than $30 million, authorities said on Wednesday. A police report said Carmen Tisch punched and scratched the painting, an oil-on-canvas called "1957-J no.2", at the recently opened Clyfford Still museum in Denver and pulled her pants down to slide her buttocks against it. Tisch was charged with felony criminal mischief on Wednesday and has been held on a $20,000 bond since the incident in late December, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney's Office. Kimbrough said Tisch urinated after she rubbed up against the canvas, but whether urine got on the painting was still under investigation, she said. Born in North Dakota in 1904, Still was considered one of the most influential of the American post-World War Two abstract expressionist artists, although he was not as well known as others such as Jackson Pollock. Still died in 1980, and the city of Denver worked for years with his widow, Patricia, to secure the single-artist museum. She died in 2005, and her husband's collection was bequeathed to the city. Four of Still's works were auctioned by Sotheby's last year for $114 million to endow the Denver museum, which opened with much fanfare in November. Because Still closely guarded his works, most of the pieces at his namesake museum had not previously been displayed. Tisch will be formally advised of the charges on Friday, Kimbrough said.

How did you like the Historian? I loved it but ended up getting bored about 2/3 into it. Agreed. That book was really interesting for a while but just went on and on and on and started repeating itslef. Too bad. I thought it was just my 2 yr old attention span. I enjoyed it a lot, though it took a long time to finish. I think it should have been about 100 pages shorter, with about 50-75 of the remaining pages devoted towards fleshing out what I thought was a fairly rushed ending instead of dragging out the build up. Still, I thought it was a very interesting concept and well researched and well written. I'd give it a B+/A-.

Finally finished "My 'Dam Life" by Sean Condon and "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova about a week ago. Now concurrently reading "How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery" by Edward Winkleman and "Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect" by Robert House.

Great post, Hari. It's definitely true that there are far more factors that determine comic book OA values than, say, fine art values. I've always said that is a big reason why it will be difficult to cross-sell comic OA to fine art collectors or anyone else who isn't a longtime established comic book fan that "gets" all these other factors (characters, storylines, key issue significance, etc.) I'm not sure if only 10% of value is determined by aesthetics - it probably varies a lot between pieces - but, overall, I agree that it's much less about aesthetics than one would think. That said, I do think that most people still care whether and how much Miller actually contributed to a Daredevil page, even if nostalgia about that run might be the primary driver of value. Although, one might wonder what the value of #168-184 storyline pages would be if the roles had been reversed and those had been mostly Janson while #185-190 were all Miller.

While we're at it, how much work did Miller do on the first Wolverine Limited Series? I recall that Rubinstein said that Miller did only extremely loose breakdowns, though I don't recall whether that was directly on board or on separate loose sheets of paper like DD #185-190. Does anyone remember?

Just went to the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver yesterday. It's totally worth a visit, not just to see all the art and artifacts, but also to use all the educational resources there which chronicle the evolution of Abstract Expressionism and other art movements of the 20th century in a larger historical context. Also, if you thought the recent Uncanny X-Men #137 page auction was thrilling to watch, your head may explode at watching Still's "1949-A-No. 1" being sold at the Sotheby's auction earlier this month (not that Still's art needs mindblowing sale prices to justify its considerable historical importance): http://www.sothebys.com/en/inside/videos.html Scroll down the menu to "Clyfford Still's '1949-A-No1'" and enjoy.

on talking dead show, kevin smith said the writer is a female, and no normal dude would react the way rick did when lori told him she and shane did the wild thing. I thought in the comics that Lori and Shane were hooking up even before Rick got shot - is that right? Is that also what's going on in the TV series? I've lost track a bit. I remember in the pilot episode that it was at least alluded to that Rick and Lori's marriage was not going well, and Lori's response to Rick's hypothesis last night that she only got it on with Shane because she thought Rick was dead and the world was going to hell was not very convincing - I forget if that's because she was already cheating with Shane before the apocalypse or some other reason?

Chris, we don't want them to leave Hershel's without a reason or a plan, but we want the depiction of their plight to speed up to the point where they actually have a reason or a plan. I'm all for character development, but this is ridiculous - it's taking multiple episodes for even the most basic story elements to progress. My biggest fear is that TWD loses its popularity and gets cancelled in a few seasons...and they're still on Hershel's farm, Sophia is still missing and there are still walkers in the barn. The show simply cannot continue to plod along at this pace, because, as much as we enjoy it, it's not going to be on the air forever and there is a LOT of ground to cover. Wouldn't it be a terrible shame if the show is on the air, for, say, 5-7 seasons and they only end up covering a small % of what's been depicted in the comic book series? Yeah, we'll know the characters inside out, but we'll never see them put through all of Kirkman's best comic storylines and we'll see a hackneyed, abrupt ending. That would be terrible.

Uhhh...and that would be bad because...? Maggie Count me in the camp who likes the TV show, but who doesn't think it holds a candle to the first 48 issues of the comic.

Wow - I would have loved to have gotten that original.

Finished the above book (a very interesting read on global culture, politics and tourism in the early 1950s) and am now 100 pages deep into Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 vampire novel "The Historian". I'm about 2/3rds of the way through "The Historian" now, but am also concurrently reading Sean Condon's "My Dam Life" about he and his wife's experiences moving to Amsterdam in 1998. The former was too heavy to bring with me on my recent trip around the world, so I opted for the latter, lighter paperback book instead. I think I need a Kindle... Given that I lived in Holland for half a year in 1999 and was a regular visitor to Amsterdam for many years afterward, I can easily relate to the author's experiences. I think the book would have limited appeal for people who don't have a deep interest in Holland, though.

DAREDEVIL #190 PAGE COVER - The Auction Has Ended Item description: Classic Elektra Resurrection Cover! Primary Artist Name: FRANK MILLER Secondary Artist Name: KLAUS JANSON Last Bid: $31,000 (Reserve Not Met) End Date: 11/17/2011 10:46:33 PM Auction Estimate: $90,000+ Note to self: do not try and flip a 6-figure purchase in just a few months in a bad economy. :doh: